I've been intrested in pc's for a long time now, but recently I had a budget to buy a new computer! My old pc still had a AMD Dual core and a nvidia 8000 series, it was almost 5 years old and I could only could play most games on minimum.

The hardware was great, becouse I could play all games at high/ultra and even some games like crysis on Ultra, I was very happy with the result. And the intrests in PC's was fully renewed.

And then I found... Bit-tech o.O *holy sound*, I saw all these great mods and I was facinated and subscribed to allot of great project, I already saw the L3P D3SK a long time ago and found it fantastic, but then I saw some more projects that did some modding to there desk, like the Interior Des(k)ign and the N +H˛0, it was fantastic! The idea came to me to do something similar, that idea grew for a few days and decided to just go for it.

The Blade Desk was born!

First I started on the wood work, this desk will be in wood simply becouse I'm not good at welding and I also like the feeling of the painted wood.
Most of the panels were sawn in the store, I made a little drawing and give it to opperator.

I made some measurements and started sawing.

Instantly after, a disaster! The hole was just bad, it was to big and couldnt hold the fan. I decided to just buy a hole drill of 115mm, it was an expencife buy but it was an easy fix, I will saw them tomorrow when I have more time.

The next day I sawed the motherboard holes,

and the cd player and fan controler hole. I still need to design and make the mounting for the cd player. Also the cd & fan controller holes need to be straight so I will need to file them.

So far so good, most of the woodwork came allong fine and started looking into my hardware. I went to my old storrage garage and found the 2nd pc I ever used when I was young, I realy had to smile when I looked at the specs, the ram sticks said: 128mb with 133mHz .

After a good laugh I started striping down the case so I could use the power button wires and the motherboard mounting plate. It was held with pull nails, I used a drill to drill them out, easy work.

The following night I painted the mounting panel (now cut in half by a saw). I painted them black and they look pritty descent!

I realy hoped everything fitted together, and surely enough, it fitted with a minor gap to the side. Since the hole desk will be painted black, that gap will not even be noticed.

Well thats about all for this past week, I hope i can make some more progress tonight and tomorrow, on fryday I will visit my uncle who will help me glue the desk together!

I've had some help with the wood work of my desk, my uncle (who was a carpenter before he retired) glued my pieces together. this makes is very solid and strong.

I started drilling the holes for the switches and the fans, I prayed that they would line up correctly with the radiator, and surely enough they did .

I thought this was a nice picture, just the desk waiting for all the hardware.

Some sleeving items and water cooling goodies also arrived that day! I was very excited, this will be my first water cooling project so its pritty simple. I will be only cooling the CPU at this time. But none the less I look forward to the result!

Fitting the CPU cooler

My glass was also ready for pickup in my local store, a big thanks to L3P for giving me some advice on the glass and rubber. I had really no experience with glass so the advice helped me to chose a layerd 7mm glass.

For the fans I saw some good looking enermax fans on the 2001 - A Case Modyssey, I should thank ASPHIAX for giving me some info on them, I realy like the looks on them and there even better than I expected! I cannot even hear them!
I bought Feser 1 UV Red cooling fluid, I think it looks realy nice!
I started fitting my hardware in the desk, it alligned almost perfectly.

After protecting everything with some cooking tissues I started the pump, only to find out I had a leak at the pump, nothing got wet luckely. After some tweaking everything was working fine.

Next: sleeving and drilling some more holes for the power supply. I'm currious if everything will stay cool enough. Only time will tell!

After I made the final drills for the fans and screws I decided to cut the screws to the right size for the radiator. Luckely my dad had a tool for that, so I just had to snap the bolt off, the tool made sure it was a clean cut

Time for the first layer of paint! Primer

After a 24h wait I sanded all the raw parts once more untill I had a realy smooth finish, it realy is silky smouth.

The next day I went to the paint shop and bought some awesome looking grafite mat black! It is just so good looking, I'm very happy I picked it.

I painted it twice, each time waiting 12h so I stayed up late that night and painted it again!
Done! All nicely painted

The next day I started extending my PSU, I big task, the 24pin, the 6pin of the Video card, and the 4pin of the CPU all had to be extended and sleeved, it took me about 6houres to do them all
This is a picture when I started the progress.

After I finished, its still not fully done, but good enough for now. I might be getting some new hardware soon, so I'll need to reposition them anyway. This was the first time I did sleeving.
I'm glad I sleeved the cables, the result is a much better looking connector

I dicided it was time to saw that fan controller a little shorter, it looks way better that way! I haven't sleeved its cables yet though, since I will be buying some more enermax fans next week.

To finish the top off, I used this foam tape, its a great anti slip tape.

An other great property of the tape is that it is a great noice absorber, With that in mind I used some on my pump and in the back of the desk, The HDD's are placed there so they won't even make noice now .

Time to fill it all up again, I also replaced one of the tubes, since it was pushing against my video card.

And here it is so far! Looks amazing to me, I might be buying some new hardware soon, Looking forward to the research

__________________
“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

So I know very little about overclocking and I've done some research in the past 2 weeks (while I was waiting for the paint to dry and such ). And I just made a good overclock on 4GHz, I'll try to push it harder in the coming days. But since my current motherboard doesn't have any heatpipes for the VRM's it will be tricky to say the least

I also did an other Crystal Disk run, and got some good results again I'm quite happy with the speed that Raid 0 gives me!

how noisy is it? I'm building my own (first) desk pc and I would like to get itcas quiet as possible but wondering whether i will need foam or insulation or it the glass stops the fan noise.

I hear a slight buzzing noice, but its not at all enoying.
The noice comes from the pump wich is already dampend with the anti slip tape, I just taped itright under the pump.
The fans are realy quiet, they are pritty much silent. My previeus fan was a Cooler Master SickleFlow 120, rated at 19db, and that was realy noicy, the enermax fans are rated at 17db.... So I wold sugest that you research your fans good!

An other thing is the material of your desk, mineis made from wood (mdf), and wood has the natural quality to absorb sound, if our desk is made out of alluminum or steel then it will make more noice.

I've been doing some small details to the desk like finishing the dvd-rw player. I've painted over the silver-gray with the same black of my desk, giving it a nice finished look. I also sleeved all the cables of the fan controller and the sata power connector of the dvd player. These are just some small things but they really pay of for the end result.

These L shaped connectors realy do the trick, there are realy no cables visible. my dad even commented when a walked in the room: "So when are you connecting the dvd-player?"

I've receved a very nice logitech G110 gaming keyboard and a steelseries mouse pad for my birthday, realy happy with it and its a very nice addition to my desk!

I borrowed my sisters cannon for these shots. I diddn't have a tripot but I placed the cannon on a pc case and a table to give it the stablity for these shots, it worked out quite well!

I used layerd glass for my desk, because acryll or clear plastic is to weak and will scratch in a matter of a days so you realy need glass.

My glass is layerd out of 3,2,3mm glass layers and unsharpend at all sides (you realy need to unsharpen all te sides, else you will die )

I payed 60€ (excl tax) for my glass (450mm x 1000mm) at a local glass store, wich was pritty cheap compared to the big hardware stores, they asked 120€. My advice is to look around alot and ask prices, local glass shops are your best bet.

As for the glue, I used wooden furniture glue, the strongest stuff you can find in a good wood or hardware store